AP Photo/Alex Brandon
ABC News reported on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s mass federal layoffs could delay the millions of deportations currently backlogged in the court system after more than 100 immigration officials were either fired or incentivized to leave as part of budget cuts.
Matt Biggs, the president of a union that covers immigration judges, told ABC News that more than 100 immigration officials had either left or been fired since Trump’s inauguration and the administration’s subsequent thinning of government employees.
“The latest dismissals and voluntary exits bring the total sum of departures to 43 immigration judges and 85 administrative staff — legal assistants, clerks and translators — employed by the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency that oversees immigration courts,” ABC News reported, with Biggs revealing that more than half of those who left did so after being incentivized under the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program.
“How do you deport people without immigration judges?” Biggs questioned in an interview with ABC. “It’s highly hypocritical. It runs contrary to what he campaigned on. He’s making it more difficult to deport people from this country. It makes no sense at all.”
Trump border czar Tom Homan vowed to begin mass deportations of illegal immigrants on day one of Trump’s second term in the White House in January. However, the pace of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts has so far left many supporters underwhelmed.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that there was “growing frustration about the pace of arrests and deportations” within the White House, which dropped following a productive first few weeks following Trump’s inauguration.
“So far, federal data shows that the administration has made nearly 23,000 arrests in the past month, up sharply compared with the Biden administration,” the Times reported. “But daily arrests have fallen since immigration agents exploded out of the gates in the opening days of Mr. Trump’s term. And deportations have not kept pace with the number of arrests, which means that the number of people waiting in ICE detention has surged, straining resources.”